Likes and dislikes (îmi place)

Expressing Likes and Dislikes

In Romanian, saying you like something works differently than in English. Instead of "I like the movie," you literally say "To me is pleasing the movie."

The verb is a plăcea (to be pleasing / to like). Because the thing you like is doing the "pleasing," it is the grammatical subject of the sentence. The person who likes it is the indirect object.

Dative Pronouns

Use these dative pronouns to show who likes the object:

Liking Singular Things

When the thing you like is singular, the verb takes its third-person singular form, place. The sentence structure is simply: Pronoun + place + noun.

Notice that the noun being liked always takes a definite article (e.g., "the chocolate" instead of just "chocolate").

Liking Plural Things

Since the thing you like is the grammatical subject, the verb must match its number. If you like a plural noun (like "dogs" instead of "a dog"), use the plural verb plac.

Questions and Dislikes

To ask if someone likes something, keep the same word order and simply raise your intonation (or add a question mark).

To say you do not like something, place nu directly before the pronoun.

You can connect these phrases with words like dar (but) to build more complex sentences: